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Amman: Jordan has blasted as "erroneous" a Human Rights Watch report that the US spy agency secretly transported at least 14 prisoners to the kingdom between 2001 and 2004.
"The report is erroneous and inaccurate. It is based on individual allegations, unobjective foundation and wrong conclusions," State Minister for Information Nasser Judeh said on Tuesday.
In a statement, Judeh said Jordan hopes that "such reports in the future would be based on accurate and objective information, instead of relaying on individual information and take them for granted as facts."
Judeh said Jordan is a party to the UN Convention against Torture, and that the country's laws criminalise torture.
"Members of terrorist organisation target the kingdom by giving false information to human rights groups, hindering efforts to fight terror," he said.
A human rights group said on Tuesday that the CIA transferred at least 14 terror suspects to Jordan for interrogation after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.
Human Rights Watch said in a new report that the US ally in the Mideast served as a proxy jailer for the CIA until at least 2004.
"The Bush administration claims that it has not transferred people to foreign custody for abusive interrogation," said Joanne Mariner, the group's terrorism and counterterrorism director. "But we've documented more than a dozen cases in which prisoners were sent to Jordan for torture." It said its 36-page report was based mainly on information from former Jordanian prisoners who had been detained with non-Jordanian terrorism suspects. The group charged that Jordan commonly tortured suspects with extended beatings on the soles of their feet.
The CIA declined to comment on the report, with spokesman Paul Gimigliano saying that "the agency does not, as a rule, comment publicly on allegations of specific rendition activities." But he defended renditions as a "lawful, valuable tool."
"They have been used for years to take terrorists off the streets," he said. "The United States does not transport individuals for the purpose of torture, and has no interest in any process that would produce bad intelligence."
US officials have acknowledged flying up to 150 of the most serious suspected terrorists secretly from one country to another, but have said they received diplomatic assurances from foreign authorities that they would not be tortured.
"No other country is believed to have held as many as Jordan," New York-based Human Rights Watch said.
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